


Per Ardua

by imaginarycircus



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginarycircus/pseuds/imaginarycircus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>M picked him, built him, and watches him break over and over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Per Ardua

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misspamela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misspamela/gifts).



The first time she met him was at the prison in Aberdeen. He'd been a stringy kid, with wide shoulders and cheek bones so sharp you could cut diamonds on them. He was about as surly as they come, which was good. She couldn't use people who were easily crushed or cowed.

He'd been such a shit during that interview, but he'd agreed to be trained and give the whole MI6 thing a shot. The grub had to be better in the army than in prison, he'd said. She didn't bother to correct what she knew was bravado.

He didn't take orders well. He didn't trust anyone. He started fights with anyone who so much as looked at him too long. But he was smart as a whip and more importantly he was endlessly tough and endlessly resourceful. He passed the training with some of the highest marks she'd ever seen and more disciplinary citations as well.

He was her third 007 and her best. She couldn't tell him that, couldn't permit either of them sentimentality; it was a weakness. There just wasn't room for it if you wanted to do your job and stay alive. She'd lost agents who'd cracked under the weight of guilt and loneliness just as often as she lost them to violence and accidents. She'd seen Bond shot, stabbed, burned, beaten to a pulp, and most recently drowned. It never got any easier with him and each time she had to fight the itch in her hands to comfort him. She never ever touched him apart from that first handshake in Aberdeen when he'd agreed to training. Touching him would not be wise and was not protocol and therefore was not allowed.

She'd almost slipped once. He'd been about twenty at the time--limping into her office hours after surgery to remove shrapnel from his left leg and left arm. He didn't sit down and she didn't insult him by telling him to. She'd bred toughness in him and she wasn't about to go soft just because he was hurt. He did a masterful job of hiding his pain, but he was pale and sweating and if he jaw locked any tighter it might never open again. She poured him a whiskey, a peaty twenty year old single malt distilled not far from his childhood home and held it out to him. His hand shook as he reached out for it, but it was the way he almost spilled the liquor when raising the glass to his lips that made her reach out to steady him.

They both froze and both stared at her outstretched hand as if it were an unexploded bomb. She slowly dropped it down to her side, wise not to make sudden movements around field agents, especially those full of pain killers and whiskey. She retreated behind the bulwark of her desk and sat.

"What have you to report 007?"

"Everything went as planned. The target was neutralized and I destroyed all the files." They'd stripped his Scottish accent away, but every once in a while she'd hear a slight roll in his Rs and she'd heard one then. It was probably the pain killers, or possible the pain itself.

He shifted his weight and she waited to see if he crumpled. He did not. Of course. He gave the rest of his report, which was too sensitive to write down anywhere and then she ordered him home to rest and told him not to come back until he looked half way human again.

He'd smirked--cheeky bastard, and drained the rest of his glass. For some reason the sound of the empty glass clinking down on her desk stayed with her, haunted her for days after. Maybe that was because when she walked around to put the glass back on the tray so that her assistant would wash it, she noticed two bright drops of blood on her carpet. She dropped the glass and knelt to pick it up. He must have torn open some stitches. She hadn't told him or ordered him or requested him to see her. She expected she'd see him once he'd started to heal, but no. Not her James. He'd stormed in before the bloody surgical anesthesia had had time to wear off to give his report.

For the merest moment she let her guard down and it was good she was already on her knees because the ground wasn't terribly far when she went down--overwhelmed by emotion. There was pride--a great deal of it, but also worry, regret, and something sharp and brilliant she would not name.

She didn't have time for such nonsense of course and the walls flew back up; she packed her feelings away in a tiny box and locked it.


End file.
